Leo Sutliffe,
1924 student manager, who travelled with the team to Pasadena.

The 1925
Rose Bowl provided a grand opportunity for the Four Horsemen and Seven
Mules, already a smash hit in the East, to strut their stuff out West. They
faced Stanford, which boasted a couple of legends itself in Fullback Ernie
Nevers and Coach Pop Warner. Nevers was brilliant in the game, running and
passing artfully, but his single-handed heroics could not offset the efforts
of eleven Notre Damers. The Irish took the game, 27 -10.

Notre Dame
had never before traveled to the West Coast to play football; Rockne had
never seen Stanford play. Yet the team's preparations for the Rose Bowl were
so meticulous that they may have had the game in their hip pocket from the
opening kick.

Elmer
layden made three interceptions that were crucial to the outcome. Rockne's
scouts were responsible. Alumni - most of them former players - had followed
Stanford during the year, charting their plays and sending the diagrams to
South Bend. The coach deciphered the X's and O's so well that he anticipated
perfectly each time Pop Warner's boys would try a certain sideline pass. He
positioned Layden accordingly, and the fullback spent the afternoon plucking
footballs away from frustrated receivers. He ran two of the interceptions
for TD's of sixty-five and seventy yards.

Rockne was
also concerned with getting his squad to Pasadena in peak physical
condition. Forewarned by colleagues that a non-stop chug to the coast would
weaken the team irreparably, the coach charted a route through New Orleans,
Houston, El Paso, and Tucson. Theoretically, this would ease the strain on
the players and allow them to get acclimated to warm weather. Practically,
the roundabout route meant that practices could be conducted away from
prying eyes; and the shifting scenery kept the team from jading during the
layoff from competition.

There was
also a problem with water. The water in towns along the way surely contained
rebellious bacteria. Rockne wanted his backfield doing the Notre Dame shift,
not the Green Apple Two-Step. So he packed a baggage car on the train with
good old Notre Dame water. Whether it was touring the French Quarter or
practicing on a high school field in Houston, the Notre Dame entourage was
shadowed dutifully by a student manager in a taxicab jammed full of water
jugs.

The Rose
Bowl was a successful foray for the Irish on more accounts than the final
score. The Horsemen, the Mules, and the ever-charming Rockne won legions of
new followers in a growing region of the country. And of course the Holy
Cross Fathers banked a big green jackpot.

A couple of
mteresting postscripts:

Two days
after the game, Jim Crowley nearly died. The team train was bound for San
Francisco for a few days of sightseeing when Crowley suddenly turned deathly
white, collapsed, and stopped breathing. Father O'Hara, the team chaplain,
performed mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and also administered last rites of
the Catholic Church. Momentarily, the halfback was breathing again, and
after one day in a hospital he was fit to rejoin the team. His illness was
officially termed "acute indigestion." Suspicions linger that he
was actually smitten by a bug known as the Revenge of the Bootlegger .

And the saga of the Rose Bowl would not
be complete without mention of Leo Sutliffe. Leo was Notre Dame's student
manager, and as such he was responsible for the team's expenses during the trip.
When he returned to campus in January he submitted his expense sheet to the
university bookkeeper. It read:

Money
received: $15,000

Money
spent: 14,985

Money
returned: 15

This, of
course, was an accountant's nightmare. The bookkeeper was outraged. "No
good! No good!" he sputtered. You've got to have everything itemized. I
need to see receipts. Now get out of here, and don't come back until you can
account for every penny!"

Leo tramped
out. He hadn't fussed with receipts, and to recollect every expenditure
during the three-week trip was an impossibility. He was in a bind. Then he
snapped his fingers - the solution was obvious.

Twenty
minutes later he walked into the bookkeeper's cubbyhole and slapped down the
same expense sheet. The clerk nearly bit through his fountain pen. He'd
never met such impudence from a student! He picked up the sheet, fully
intending to stick it in an orifice of Sutliffe's body, then looked at it
closely, swallowed hard, and slumped back in his chair. "I guess
this'll be all right," he murmured.

What the
bookkeeper had seen were the initials "KKR" scrawled across the
paper. Leo had gone to Rockne and had him okay the accounting. Checkmate.

Leo
Sutliffe, where are you today? The Teamster's Pension Fund is looking for a
few good men.

*
* * * * *

The Rose
Bowl itself was one of those odd contests in which the offensive leader
winds up on the wrong end of the final score. Stanford beat Notre Dame in
first downs, seventeen to seven, and in yards gained, 298 to 179. Only in
points did the Irish come out on top. The lopsided stats made Stanford the
game's real victor, someone suggested.

"Sure,"
answered Sleepy Jim Crowley, "and next year the major leagues will
start awarding baseball games to the team with the most men left on
base."